Faculty experts comment on the refugee crisis

As of Sept. 3, almost half of the Syrian pop­u­la­tion has been dis­placed by tur­moil that has engulfed the Middle Eastern country since 2011, according to the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment. About 7 mil­lion Syr­ians are dis­placed within the country, and more than 4 mil­lion have sought refuge in coun­tries from Jordan to France,USAID said.

This crisis has recently gar­nered greater atten­tion from the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity as an influx of refugees are making their way into the Euro­pean Union and to coun­tries that are strug­gling to deter­mine how best to help. Images of a 3-​​year-​​old boy, Aylan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish beach have gone viral on social media, showing for the world the hor­rors of the crisis.

Serena Parekh, an asso­ciate pro­fessor of phi­los­ophy and expert in the phi­los­ophy of human rights, says that the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity must acknowl­edge its respon­si­bility to assist refugees before the crisis can be prop­erly addressed.

“We have a moral oblig­a­tion,” said Parekh, who is writing a book on the topic. “When we look back on this in five years or 10 years or 15 years, we are going to be ashamed at our­selves at how we han­dled this. No one can play the ‘it’s not my problem’ card anymore.”

Parekh also argues that those fleeing Syria are not migrants; they are refugees. “Migrants leave their native country for better oppor­tu­ni­ties; refugees are forced to leave their coun­tries because of fear,” she said. “They are risking every­thing because they have to.”

No uni­fied plan for refugee resettlement

The crisis’ expo­nen­tial growth can be attrib­uted in part to the lack of a uni­fied, global plan for refugee reset­tle­ment, Parekh explained, noting that each nation has dif­ferent poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for addressing the refugee situation.

For example, Turkey’s fed­eral gov­ern­ment is funding refugee camps for 1.9 mil­lion refugees there; Lebanon has no camps for the 1.1 mil­lion refugees in its country; Hun­gary has begun con­structing a wall along the Ser­bian border to pre­vent refugees from entering; and Ice­landic cit­i­zens are asking their gov­ern­ment to accept more refugees.

“To me, this is ‘the’ issue of the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity,” said Denis Sul­livan, a pro­fessor of polit­ical sci­ence and inter­na­tional affairs and the co-​​director of the Middle East Center at Northeastern.

Sul­livan has seen one refugee camp first­hand, con­ducting research at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan since 2013. Oper­ated by the United Nations Refugee Agency, Zaatari opened in 2012 and is now one of the country’s most pop­u­lated com­mu­ni­ties with some 80,000 people.

“Zaatari has elec­tricity, road­ways, its own economy,” Sul­livan explained.

‘No end in sight’

In order to quell the crisis, Sul­livan said the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity must address the ini­tial cause: the ongoing con­flict in Syria. More than 210,000 people have died since fighting started there in 2011, first as an anti-​​government uprising and then as a civil war.

“There is no end in sight to the Syrian con­flict,” Sul­livan said. “A deter­mined American-​​EU-​​Russian ini­tia­tive must be under­taken to end this crisis that threatens sta­bility throughout the Middle East and now increas­ingly inside Europe.”

For now, Parekh said the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity should examine tem­po­rary reset­tle­ment with the poten­tial for returning home in a few years.

“The reality is that it may be gen­er­a­tions before people return,” Parekh said. “We have to be able to help.”

-By Joe O’Connell